A Fable of the Aurora
by ElleryForgot
Summary: A short story about the Aurora. All these years people thought that Heka was just a child God who helped those in need. But what if in fact she was a child-ish witch who didn't understand the frailness of human life. Short story of Prince Khafra and Heka


After hiking for miles up the cold tundra to see the dancing aurora in the sky, you might spot a young brown-haired woman look up at the sky crying as she smiles at the lights. Ask her why she's crying. Maybe she will just laugh, wipe away the tears and tell you it's nothing. Maybe if you're lucky, if you are _really_ lucky, she'll tell you of how these lights learned to dance.

She'll start off with a Prince, describing him and how he was loved. She'll tell you of a villain, of an evil Witch who was feared as a God, who liked to play tricks on people and would replace everything she was with a new story that fit her needs better. She'll tell you about their epic fights in Egypt and when you ask her why she's talking about Egypt she will promptly hush you with a grumble about how kids these days. She will then continue the story about how the evil witch saved once Prince, but only once and it'll start off with a trick gone wrong;

The Prince busted out of the snow in a mysterious new place with a jet black sky above that had glittering stars shining down on him. Shivering in his royal clothes and crown that were too thin for such frigid air, his skin would start to tingle and go numb. "HEKA!" he bellowed at the top of his lungs into the crisp air.

"Where am I Heka!" yelled Prince Khafra, the King of Egypt, as he tried to walk through the snow. He kept stumbling and tripping getting more cold with each step.

"Why don't you sit a spell Kaffie?" said a voice as a chair popped up behind him and a force made him sit down in it. He struggled awhile but knew, this was Heka's work. The Sorcerous popped out of thin air in front of him with her own chair and table with her slim body bundled into a thick and plush jacket lined in the lushest fur and a fantastically colored scarf while toasting up marshmallows next to their little tea party set up. "You're in the great wintery north! I thought you might want to _chill._ " She giggled.

"Bring me back to my council! We were in a meeting!" demanded the Prince as he tried to get out of the chair and closer to the fire.

"Um…. No," said Heka with a snap of her fingers making him sit back down.

"HEKA!" snapped the prince.

"What?" asked Heka with an innocent look. "I know what you guys were talking about in there and I wasn't liking the sounds of it. 'Ways to take down Heka' like I wouldn't spot that from a mile away! I was doing you a _favor!_ Instead of stressing how to deal with me we can now have a Cocoa party! Would you like marshmallows in your Cocoa or your S'mores?"

"You need to bring me back now!" the Prince had stopped yelling at this point but his voice kept its furiosity.

"I am the **God** of **magic!** I don't have to do Jack-squat if I don't want to. It's rule number one of being awesome," laughed Heka with a sly smile.

"You are a **Goddess** for Pete's sake! Please have mercy and let me go home!" said the Prince as he tried to create friction on his skin to warm it up.

"Well your people see me as a childish God so might as well act like it," said Heka as she whipped up a couple of graham crackers and chocolates to smoosh her marshmallow between.

"They see you as a merciful God, a God of healing and justice! Does this seem just to you?"

"Yes," said Heka as her eyes grow cold and her face turned hard as stone as she glared over at the shivering prince.

"Please Heka! My people know how to live under a burning sun in the desert, not in the snow. I won't survive here," whispered the Prince as he slowly started to sound weaker and weaker with each word. "It's already gotten too cold for me."

"Oh! Don't be such a whiny baby! Suck it up," scoffed Heka as she sipped her newly conquered steaming cup of hot cocoa. "Cocoa?"

"Please," pleaded Prince Khafra, but this time it was more of a whimper, losing all his pride and begging with the one person he hated. Something was wrong, Heka knew it, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it. It might be because she was an immortal being and didn't understand the fragility of humans but she knew that this man, the man she has been following around for years in a vain attempt to show someone out there that she wasn't all bad or all good. That she got the job done. But this… this was going too far.

"Kaffie?" asked Heka as watch him fall out of his chair into the snow. "Khafra?" yelled Heka as she kneeled next to him, trying to shake him awake but his body had grown too cold. His shivering had gotten more violent as his eyelids started to slowly close from him losing consciousness.

"Khafra? Khafra!" yelled Heka as she whips off her scarf to wrap around his neck and quickly takes off her coat to wrap his shoulders in.

"No no no no no," mumbled Heka mostly to herself as she pushed her long green hair back off her forehead and running her fingers along her scalp to hold it there as she tried to think of something to fix this. She didn't mean for this to happen, she never meant for this to happen. This was supposed to be a little hazing, a little joke. Be he was sick, or injured or something! She just couldn't put her finger on it since she a little too panicked. This was just supposed to be a fun joke.

"This wasn't supposed to happen! This wasn't supposed to happen!" said Heka as she started to freak out. "Warmth! That what he needs! He needs warmth!"

Heka closed her eyes and hoovered her hands over Khafra's body thinking of something warm to get his body temperature back up. Her hands lit on fire like a lighter turning on as she slowly waved them over his body, trying not to burn him.

"Come on! Come on!" said Heka as she opens her eyes to look at him. He had stopped shivering and for a second Heka had thought it had worked. She extinguished one of the flames and checked his body temperature, it did not.

"Please work please!" said Heka as the flames turned from an orange-red to a brilliant blue-green as she tried to burn them hotter and brighter. Still no movement from the prince.

"What's hotter than fire?" she asked herself as she looked at her burning blue-green hands in wonderment. Then she remembered that Khafra's people believed in the sun for whatever reason. They practically worshipped it on a national level.

"If there really is an Amun-Ra up there," said Heka as she started to twirl her hands around, charging up her energy since this was going to be a momentous spell. "Then please, _please_ let this work! Please let me fix this, he is needed. Please just… please."

She then placed one hand to his heart and reached the other one high up to the sky and slowly, slowly she tried to gather sunlight from the night sky. She continued to pull something, anything, until every magical fiber in her body burned, but she still pulled. She had ruined this man's life more than both her son's and daughter's, she couldn't let him die without giving him the proper ending he deserved.

The problem with playing with nature is that it doesn't always listen. Lightning started to spark and crash around the area in loud booms, mostly because she hadn't been able to separate the retrieval of the protons from the electrons, creating an enormous group of positive and negative charges in the sky above. One lightning bolt struck her right in the palm and travelled through her magical vines as she wailed at the pain. The Prince's body started to shiver again as his heart started pushing more blood through his veins trying to warm him up.

"Yes!" squealed Heka with relief, she smiled down at him warmly only for it to fall into a bitter frown since he still hadn't gained consciousness which wasn't a good sign.

"Not today Prince Khafra. Not today," said Heka as she took her hand off his heart and raised it, quickly moving it in a plucking motion to get rid of any unwanted electrons. With that hand working, the other was free to grab at the protons from everywhere, reaching well past the atmosphere into the cosmoses. A bead of sweat dripped down her temple as she started feeling the effect of the spell starting to wear her down. She pushed through, finally able to grab ahold of the light protons in the sun and bring them down to the earth, pulling has hard as she could to get them closer.

"Heka," whispered Prince Khafra as he slowly regains consciousness, if only for a second. "Please just let me go."

"Shush now, mommy's trying to concentrate," said Heka in a joking matter as her hand was trying to combat the electrons by moving faster, starting to wear and tear on that hand since even magical creatures weren't supposed to be able manipulate atoms. But she kept picking until a small ball of the sun could be seen in the night sky.

"It's working!" said Heka with glee, only to lose feeling in one of her arms as it dropped to the ground with a thud. The tiny star was released and her hard work just sat there miles away to do any good.

"It's a sign," whispered the Prince as his eyes start to go heavy again, losing consciousness.

"I **am. A.** **God!"** grunted Heka as she quickly grasped her hand around the sun's proton energy again trying to pull it in. Her other hand started to pick away again, only slower and with less furiosity as the first time, but the ball of sun energy was getting closer and bigger as Heka stuck with it. Then it hit earth's atmosphere and the sky erupted in greens and yellows that lit up the sky. Prince Khafra just stared up in wonderment at these colors, forgetting for a second that he was too cold to move. A few seconds later the lights added a blue color to it that mixed brilliantly with the greens and yellows already in the sky. As Heka picked more and more, being the now much bigger ball of fire towards Khafra, the sky filled with reds and purples with a bright orange, red, yellows and whites of the fireball made a brilliant show of colors dance and twirl through the skin of the sky like ribbons. Khafra sat up on his elbows, looking up at the new display of colors, more brilliant and vibrant then any rainbow or dyes he has ever seen. He tried to take a moment to remember this moment because it made him sad, this will be the only time he would be able to see this.

"Oh good," said Heka exhausted as she falling down next to Khafra in the snow, drenched in sweat and unable to move anything, "you're okay!" The small star just stayed there, unable to get momentum to travel back but also had nothing pulling it towards the ground so it just stayed there, warming the earth and creating a showcase of colors that the earth had never seen before this time.

"Are you just going to leave it there?" asked Khafra as he continued to stare up at it in wonderment.

"I don't have enough energy to put it back," she said looking at her shredded hands in dismay, hoping that she had some ointment back at home to fix them. "I might not have the energy to do anything ever again."

"Why didn't you just let me sit by your fire in the first place!"

"Eh," said Heka, shrugging it off. "I was committed by then."

"You stubborn old fool!" growled Khafra softly with a smile on his lips as he continued to look up at the marvel she created, noticing that it was melting the snow around them. "But we can't keep it just burning there."

"You're going to make me do magic again aren't you?" asked Heka a little salty as she looked at him.

"You know it's the right thing to do," said Khafra as he looked down at her as if to will her to continue.

"Fine!" said Heka as she started to spin her hands together, hoping to generate enough energy to do a final spell. She wearily got back on her feet and braced her legs, planting them in the soil and giving them a slight bend for support. The ground started to move and quake as she started to push the plates of the ground together into a peak, trying make it grow and grow up towards the star. She starts to punch the air, making large impacts to the mountain's top, in a perfect casing around the star with a little pointed top that Heka left to cap it off. She then released those plates and started shifting more around the mountains base to enclose the sun, making the mountain grow larger and larger. Once the light and heat of the start was entirely sealed off Heka fell to the ground, Prince Khafra ready to catch her and hold her up.

"Why did you make a mountain?" asked Khafra as he looked up at it, noticing tiny beams of light coming from it.

"That's all the magic I can do," said Heka as she curled up slightly in his arms. "It was just too hard to add it back to the sun. Maybe next time."

"But there are holes," said Khafra as a little bit of proton energy spurted form the hole, creating a thin strip of red, green, blue and purple twirling light through the sky.

"You want to try! Why don't you try to defy the structure of all the earth and cosmos and not have a few holes!"

"You're right, you're right I'm sorry," said Khafra in defeat. Heka just laid her head back on his shoulders and looked up at the sky as it danced with colors occasionally, and taking in with marvel at what she created.

"Um…" said Khafra after a while. "Can you take us back home?" He had started to shiver again was getting colder, even with Heka's thermal coat.

"Fine," sighed Heka as she starts regenerating her energy, taking them back home.

That mountain is still there. The locals stand in awe of it and the lights that dance across the sky around it. Some days it even travels around the world, going to places that no one has ever seen these gorgeous lights before. Lights that stick in your memory and make you think of a love one. And sometimes Heka likes to visit them, to look up at the sky and remember Prince Khafra even after he had passed in his old age with a loving family and a nation who adored him at his deathbed.

Sometimes if you see a brown-haired woman look up at the sky while an aurora lights up the sky and she starts to cry as she smiles ask her why she's crying. Maybe she will just laugh, wipe away the tears and just tell you it's nothing. Maybe if you're lucky, if you are _really_ lucky, she'll tell you of how these lights learned to dance.

You might tell her when she's done that it was a great fairy-tale. She'll just smile and look up at the lights again, not caring if you believe or not, just caring that one other soul will remember.


End file.
